FBI probes massive leak of driver’s license data affecting North America
More than 153 million U.S. and Canadian driver’s licenses were found for sale on the dark web, prompting an FBI investigation into the breach of an identity-verification firm.
Digital scans of over 153 million driver’s licenses from the United States and Canada appeared on a Russian cybercrime forum, leading the Federal Bureau of Investigation to open a probe. The data, which also included 10 million other identification cards, three million travel documents and 579,000 medical cards, was traced to a widely used identity-verification company based in Louisiana, according to security researcher Brian Krebs.
Krebs said the breach was first flagged when a forum user advertised scans of documents belonging to 170 million North Americans, including Krebs’s own Virginia license. The company implicated, IDScan.net, confirmed it was investigating the incident, though it declined to provide further details.
The FBI confirmed it is “looking into the incident” but declined additional comment because the investigation is ongoing. Threat researcher Zach Edwards of Infoblox noted that the scale of the breach is unprecedented and could pose national-security risks for high-profile individuals.
The illicit marketplace listing, known as Nexus, was removed shortly after the story broke. The Federal Trade Commission advises affected individuals to monitor or freeze their credit and to contact their local Department of Motor Vehicles to report compromised licenses. The FBI and other agencies continue to assess the scope of the breach.